Page 5 of The Lady's Last Mistake
Not that his physician’s income even reached to the shins of what Grant lived on from his annual inheritance.
Cassie’s arms uncrossed, and she balled her hands into little fists. “Oh yes, Dr. Mole Inspector, how impressive you are.”
The barb unexpectedly stung. Being the fourth son of a marquess, he’d been of little significance to his father, and thus, was allowed to enroll in medical school. The idea of spending his life as nothing more than a gentleman, plying society and politics and taking weekends in the country for shooting had been dull enough to make him panic. Medicinegave him a focus. A purpose. The marquess had, he’d later confessed, believed Grant would see sense and drop out of university. Either that or fail miserably. When he hadn’t, his father had been livid. It was disgraceful to work, Lindstrom had seethed. Any profession was a stain that could not come out in the wash.
Yes, Grant’s calls to peerage homes were mostly for things like gout and megrims and venereal diseases, the plagues of the rich, well-fed, and sedentary. Most of his patients were men, too, the ladies too scandalized by his reputation to permit him. But his true work, the most rewarding work, was something he couldn’t speak of. The charity clinic he ran in Whitechapel under a false name had to remain a secret, and not only because the marquess would disown him. His regular patients would also disavow him. No upper-class swell would stand for sharing a doctor with poor, working class Londoners.
Likening him to nothing more than a mole inspector was facetious of Cassie, but the thorn stuck in just the same.
“I don’t have to prove my profession to you,” he said. “If you’ll excuse me, one of us needs to leave, and it appears I am the only one possessing any good sense.”
He broke away from her, only to dig in his heels at sounds of voices in the hall. They were nearing the door. And then, the doorknob jiggled.
“What’s this?” came a woman’s exclamation. “I didn’t leave it locked.”
Cassie gasped, then clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle it. Grant’s stomach reached somewhere toward his knees.Bloody hell.The doorknob jiggledagain.
“Do you have a key or don’t you?” came the voice of an impatient man.
“Of course, but I am certain I didn’t lock it.”
Grant backed up and instinctively grabbed Cassie by the wrist.
“What do we do?” she whispered.
There was no time to contemplate and only one place to go. He pulled her toward the open doors to the bedchamber, off the sitting room. It was dark, without a single lamp lit, but they made it safely inside before the telltale click of the door’s lock gave way.
“Pour me a drink, darling,” the unknown woman said as Cassie wrenched her arm away. She was breathing loudly, no doubt on the verge of panic. And well she should. He was beginning to feel the touch of it himself. The man and woman, whoever they were, had likely only come here for one reason—to employ the bed that he and Cassie were currently standing next to.
Thankfully, this room had a door to the hall as well. Grant hurried to it, Cassie on his heels. But the knob was stuck.
“Unlock it,” Cassie whispered.
“I would if I could,” he whispered back. Damn it! What was wrong with the bloody thing? He twisted it again and again; searched for a lock but found none.
She pushed his hand out of the way. “Let me.”
“Oh yes, because your touch is magic,” he muttered while she fiddled with the handle. It had to be permanently locked and sealed.
A privacy screen across the room could shield them but reaching it would require them to dash in front of the opendoors to the sitting room. Too risky. There was another door to their left, perhaps to a boudoir.
The knob on that door gave. “In here,” he whispered to Cassie who hadn’t yet given up on the sealed door.
In the sitting room, the woman giggled and moaned.
“In here,now,” he whispered harshly.
He stepped into the darkened room and realized it wasn’t a boudoir at all. It wasn’t even a room. It was a shallow, slim closet. Almost as soon as he stepped in, he’d reached the end of the space. Shelving pressed into his back and shoulders as he turned to face the entrance, and when Cassie dove into the closet with him, she collided with him, treading on his toes. Grant leaned around her and shut the door as softly as he could. Cassie shifted, attempting to push away, but there was no room. Her heels banged into the door, and the noise of it blared in his ears.
He took her shoulders into his hands and held her still. “Do not move.”
Christ. To be found like this, not only in a bedchamber but in a sodding closet, would spell disaster. Fournier would demand he marry his chit of a sister, and while that would certainly make Lord Lindstrom happy, Grant would be stuck. Trapped. Attached to a woman who made no effort to conceal her rancor for him.
Their uneven breathing filled the small space, and he became distinctly aware of the front of Cassie’s body against his. Not only that, but when she’d slammed into him, her palms had come up between them. They were now pressed against his chest. The woman’s incessant giggling from the sitting room, as her beau no doubt plied her with his hands and other unsavory appendages, corkscrewed through him.Hell, if the pair of them came into this room and bandied about on the bed together, while he and Cassie stood like this, listening… It would be a torture unlike any he’d ever imagined.
He closed his eyes and tried to inhale and exhale evenly. With her hands bracing herself against his chest, she had to be able to feel the thrashing of his heart. It was getting hot in here. As he steadied his breaths, the scent of sun-warmed fruit brightened his senses. Apricots? Grant angled his nose toward the crown of her hair.
“What are you doing?” Cassie whispered.
